Day 6 - Here come the meat sweats

Had a great night sleep last night. The hotel is bloody lovely, could stay here longer. There was an indoor pool downstairs so we woke at 7.30 and headed down to do some lengths which basically just turned into messing about like kids. The hotel came with a free brekfast so we headed into the dining area and tucked in. We started with these horrible plastic type omlettes with cheese in but could only handle one so went back to peanut butter on toast and yogurts AND a cup of english tea which was a treat after a week without any. After all showering we were out by 9.30 and headed into the downtown St Louis. We found a place and payed the meter giving us only two hours to explore. The huge arch structure looking over the city was visable anywhere so we headed that direction. We heard that you could take a lift to the top so we were quite excited. It was an amazing structure. 650 feet high and wide it stood mighty above the city and the famous missippi river.

We headed underneath the "gateway to St louis" and went through security checks which took half an hour so by the time we got through and had to wait for tickets we wouldnt have time to go up. So we looked around the free museum and then went back up to the surface. The misisipi was right there so we felt the need to walk down and just touch it. Walking back to the car we went through the park where loads of kids were playing in the water fountains and old rough looking dudes played guitar. It was a great place and one the best cities ive ever visited. But now it was time to start the journey on route 66!

We got onto the mother road and used our route 66 travel book for tips where to stop. Our first stop was a "Ted Drewes", a ice cream parlour that was supposed to be amazing. Pulling up it was booming with life and customers waiting to be served. A good sign. We all got something different but all had the same reaction " wow this f*cking amazing!" I had apple pie and ice cream, george strawberry and ice cream and Sam a strawberry blend thing. It was so good.

After some funny conversation with some middle age american women we got back on the go. The book reccommended a stop to visit the biggest chair in the world. It was in a small town with nothing much else going on apart from this huge chair. Why its there i have no idea but its pretty cool.

We were enjoying travelling on route 66 alot more already due to the fact of the complete random awesome things you find on the way such as the chair. We were heading for a town called "Joplin" just near the state line of Oklahoma to spend the night. George and Sam swapped driving shifts and i got to ride up front, the new pattern at the moment and we headed on west. The road has some really funny billboards now and then that crack me up such as " Choose Jesus or burn in hell!" and so on, religous nonsense but its hilarious.

The heat again today has been crazy, topping at 35 degrees the sun was out often but it was just the sheer humidity that was getting to us. Sitting in the car was just awful as having the windows down was just way to loud and the air-con uses alot of Gas so we sat shirtless most of the way actually dripping with sweat. Burgers and pizza literally oozing out of us.

Arriving in Joplin at around 7.30pm we headed down the main drag and saw a motel advertised so decided to check it out. It looked okay but these places always make me a little un-easy, maybe just to many horror films. The room was only $60 for 2 queen beds, considerably cheaper than last night so we agreed and moved our stuff in, under the watchful eye of some whitetrash women smoking fags in her doorway.

I did some quick research on the laptop for somewhere to watch England vs France in the euros tomorrow morning and found a few names of places. Getting in the car we headed out to check them out to ask if they weree showing them and to my delight we found two so i was absolutely buzzing about that. On the way back we stopped in a sports bar for some food. The boys had some veggie wraps and i had fajhitas, strangely acompanied by mashed potato and gravy. It was quite nice, just weird.

The bar maids were all fancinated by our accents and we were loving the attention its got to be said!

So i need to get some sleep ready to cheer on England tomorrow! COME ON !!!!!